A/N: I'm back from holiday, so updates should be more regular again. That said, I will end this note by reminding you all this will be a long fic as I'm aware that this is perhaps not the chapter that would be expected following the previous one (or perhaps it is, it is House haha). I promise this is all going somewhere, and I hope that it's at least in character :). Reviews would be awesome, and more to come soon!

The silence stretches out, long and awkward, and Cameron swallows nervously as blue eyes that had moments ago been intense and fixated on her appreciatively now look carefully and dismissively past her. She lowers her own, her lashes feeling heavy with liquor, and inexplicably with salt.

Not all that inexplicable... I currently feel like I did when I was a kid and mom would make her increasingly rare appearances to pick me up from school. Everyone knew, of course, they did. Everyone knew who she was; who she was and who Mindy wasn't. Dom and I looked nothing alike. It shouldn't have mattered, but it did to me. Not who she was or our private family business, but how those other mothers looked at me. Or didn't look at me, as it was. Looking past me, over me, like I'd done some terrible, embarrassing thing that offended them somehow. I grew up not to care what those stuck-up bitches thought or felt about something I had no control over, but I remember that feeling, of course, I do. Like I just wanted to sit on the floor and cry, but of course, that wasn't an option as I got older. So I kept it in, kept it down, and just worked through that awful feeling of dread and guilt. The kind that sits in your gut and makes you want to throw up... Yeah, that's where that salt is coming from.

Her gaze flickers to the crumpled heap of her jeans beside the couch, and she swallows. Shifting her weight uncomfortably, she silently begs House to look at her, to say something, but he remains detached and distant. Biting her lip, she finally pushes herself up a little awkwardly and with an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty, and bends down to pick up her clothes that lay scattered on the floor.

House watches this cautiously out of the corner of his eye, drinking in pale limbs and various freckles and marks as the blonde gets dressed without saying a word. He notes that while he has always thought of her as skinny - worryingly so - this is mostly an illusion cast, presumably unwittingly, by her choice of wardrobe. She is remarkably slim, but she is slight; lean. Proportionate. Not as delicate as he has always considered her to be.

Perhaps not, but you will always think of her that way.

He supposes he will. His attention returns once more to the deep incision marring her hip before the soft cotton of her top falls down to cover it. She bends down to pull up her jeans, and her hair hides her features from him, but he can tell from the way she holds herself - the way she moves - that she's on edge. He knows that he needs to say something and that he can't just remain shut off from her, but he's not sure what to do or how to handle this. Watching dark denim rise to hide the bare flesh of her thighs - intimate skin he should under no sane circumstance know hosts a curious L-shaped scar - he feels he has never been so uncertain about what to do that he can remember. He is hatefully apprehensive of speaking to her in case he says something he shouldn't. He'd been on thin ice earlier in the lab, very thin ice, and he knows that if he repeats his mistake of filling the void of discomfort with spite after what just happened, he might find himself responsible for a situation he can't put right.

So instead, he simply watches.

Watches as she gives her jeans a final tug up over slim hips.

Watches as she seems momentarily unsteady on her feet.

His gaze drifts from Cameron to the bottles on the table in which they'd indulged after quite a few more before ending up in her apartment. Brow furrowing, the slimy and unsavoury thought slithers into his mind of whether or not she would have invited him home or gone along with any of this had she been sober. He-

"-There's a difference between being a little tipsy and stumbling, and lacking the awareness or the ability to make my own decisions."

The blonde interrupts his troubled thoughts, and he looks up at her sharply, holding her gaze as she gestures pointedly towards the bottles on the table.

"You were frowning."

She informs him, and he nods as he takes in the defensive way she crosses her arms tightly around herself and clenches her jaw.

"I often am."

"No. Usually, you look vexed or smug."

"Flatterer."

"You looked concerned."

"How awful. How will you ever forgive me?"

He bites back gruffly, but the blonde's jaw remains clenched and her stance remains rigid and uncomfortable. He realises with belated amusement that he sits entirely naked but for his socks as she stares down at him with an unreadable expression, and he reaches down to grab his shirt and pulls it across his lap. He watches her intently as he does so - watches her mouth for any sign of a smirk - but her demeanour doesn't change and he begins to feel that old, familiar itch to beat her down so as not to deal with his confusion when they share a room.

He sorely wishes he'd driven here, drunk or not.

That way he'd have an escape.

An out.

"I wanted to do that."

Cameron states quietly, and he's able to ascertain more from the tone of her voice than the woodenness of her posture that she feels just as lost following their recent foray into unknown territory as he does. His eyes remain fixed on hers as he shakes his head, wondering for the thousandth time what she sees in him.

"... There are many things that women do that men find notoriously perplexing. One of those is saying one thing, and meaning something entirely different. I would have to attest that this isn't true when it comes to you, and it rarely has been. You say precisely what you mean to say and mean for others to understand... Ironically, this makes you the most perplexing woman I know."

"Forgive me if I fail to see the humour in that."

"There was none implied. It was just an observation."

"Right."

Cameron replies in a small voice, before turning on her heel and walking stiffly to the door of her bedroom. House watches her go with a frown, unsure where they go from here. He almost calls out to ask her, but she pauses as she gets to the door, her fingers resting on the handle, and speaks quietly without looking back at him.

"Pull out the sofa if you want. There's a cab company card pinned to the fridge... They're open from 5.30 am."

Silence. She supposes she'd expected little else, but she can feel him looking at her. Can feel him watching her, and for the first time in a couple of years, she feels a strong wave of hatred towards him. It vanishes as swiftly as it arrived, and she's left feeling hurt and exhausted. These are emotions she is far more familiar with when it comes to House, but when she offers him some quiet parting words, her tone is laced with a bitter note of resentment that he finds uncomfortably foreign.

"Generally, when two people who know and respect each other have sex, what they take away from that experience isn't that they find the other person 'perplexing'. Certainly, it's not the only thought they'd have to share about the matter."